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Last week, Linda Henneberg, a young science communication intern at CERN in Switzerland -- best known these days as the home of the Large Hadron Collider -- wrote a blog post about her experiences at the laboratory as both a woman and a non-PhD physicist. Haltingly, timidly, even a bit apologetically, she confessed, "I’ve never felt more constantly objectified, hit on, and creeped on than while at CERN.

She was careful to say that she has not encountered blatant sexism of the most egregious sort, although she has endured unwelcome awkward flirting: a wink and a hand on the knee, lame attempts at playing "footsie" with her under the table during meetings, and of course, tacky double entendres. Even then, she cut the guys a lot of slack; it's just social awkwardness, she rationalized, not a malicious attempt to make her feel uncomfortable -- and yet, she does feel uncomfortable. (There may also be cultural factors at play, given the international diversity at CERN.)

What she found equally bothersome is that because she's a woman in education, not physics research, she simply isn't taken seriously by her male colleagues at CERN, who apparently treat her with amiable condescension. Henneberg holds an undergraduate degree is in physics and a graduate degree in science communication, yet "[P]eople here, men especially, treat me like some sort of novelty item. Like because I am not a physicist, I have nothing substantive to contribute to CERN, but it’s cute that I try."

There's a phrase for what Linda Henneberg is experiencing: it's called a "chilly climate," and it describes not just overt sexism or sexual harassment -- which most people agree are unacceptable, at least in theory -- but the myriad unconscious diminishing behaviors that seem to proliferate in any male-dominated environment, whether it be a classroom, a boardroom, an Internet chat room, World of Warcraft, or an international physics laboratory.

The Australian band Tripod immortalized this phenomenon with their satirical tune, "Hot Girl in the Comic Shop" (video at end of post), poking fun at the social awkwardness and ridiculous over-reaction of nerdy comic book guys at the sudden appearance of a girl in their male-dominated realm.

What constitutes "chilling" behavior? A teacher calls on the boys in class more than the girls. A CEO ignores what a woman says in a meeting but listens intently when a man makes the exact same point. A conference emcee mentions a female speaker's appearance rather than (or in addition to) her accomplishments, but feels no need to comment on the appearance of male speakers. A guy at an atheist/skeptics meeting hits on a young woman in an elevator at 4 AM, ignoring the fact that she just spent the evening talking about how she hates being objectified at such gatherings.

All these sorts of things seem tiny and insignificant by themselves, but they add up, and this produces a cumulative "chilling" effect that makes women feel unwelcome, like they don't belong. That's a "chilly climate." The effect is subtle; sometimes we're not even consciously aware of it. We just have that nagging feeling of being "less than," unable to put our finger on why we feel that way.

Here's some good news for Henneberg: in the physics community, the "chilly climate" is a widely recognized concern (yes, even at CERN), with many programs in place to improve working environments for women in physics. The American Physical Society has a site visits program and maintains a "Best Practices" document for academic departments, for example, and in 2007 released a gender equity report (PDF) summarizing the progress made to date and offering recommendations for future improvements. That's not to say they've solved the problem: the number of women physicists is still less than 20%, one of the worst ratios in the sciences, along with engineering and mathematics. But it's progress, nonetheless.

With all the other trouble in the world, why should we care about this? It's because those climate issues chase many women out of the hard sciences -- and indeed, out of any male-dominated community. In March, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, conducted an NSF-funded study on the retention (or lack thereof) of women in engineering. Nearly half of the women surveyed who left engineering said they did so because of negative working conditions, lack of advancement or low salary, and one in three left because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture. Only one in four left to spend more time with family -- the usual excuse that gets trotted out when folks try to explain away the low numbers of women in such fields.

The message is clear: if you want to attract women to your community, the first step is to make sure they feel welcome.

Chill, Baby, Chill

The term "chilly climate" was coined back in 1982 by feminist icon Bernice Sandler, now a senior scholar at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington, DC; an updated 2005 paper addressing the chilly climate in the classroom can be found here (PDF). For those who might not have heard of Sandler, she's known as the "godmother of Title IX," having played a pivotal role in the passage of that law prohibiting gender discrimination in education, and she filed the first charges of gender discrimination in the 1970s against more than 250 institutions -- at a time when such anti-discrimination laws simply didn't exist.

I had the honor of moderating a panel discussion back in June for the National Coalition of Girls' Schools that included Sandler. Honestly? I was expecting a stern, forceful Caped Crusader sort of person, and instead encountered a charming gray-haired soft-spoken woman who shares my penchant for rich jewel toned clothing (check out that awesome jacket in the photot -- WANT!), and who insisted I call her "Bunny." Yet, in her own quiet way, she is every bit as formidable as the Caped Crusader persona in my head -- an iron hand in a velvet glove.

Sandler told me she first encountered the chilly climate for women as a feminist activist in the 1970s, sitting in a policy meeting in which she noticed that the few token women in the room were constantly being interrupted by the men. She decided to perform her own little social experiment, carefully keeping count of the number of times both men and women in the meeting were interrupted. The results: women were interrupted (invariably by men) at least three times more often than the men.

Sandler shared her results with her male colleagues, who were predictably defensive, claiming she must have miscounted or been biased in some way because of course they would never do such a thing. But the next day, when the meeting resumed, the men were far more careful not to interrupt when the women were speaking. Their awareness of the problem altered the way they treated the women in the meeting, even though they denied the problem existed. And Sandler realized, "Oh -- this is changeable behavior." She's been working to change those behaviors ever since.

I thought of Sandler as I was preparing for The Amaz!ing Meeting (TAM9) in Las Vegas last week, where I was slated to give a light-hearted talk on how changing concepts of the universe have been reflected in popular culture. For the uninitiated, TAM is an annual conference organized by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), and has grown from humble beginnings into the biggest gathering of atheists and skeptics in the country. Science and skepticism are natural allies, so as a science writer, I am tangentially involved with that community, and I've met some great people within it. And yet -- I almost didn't go this year. Why? One word: "Elevatorgate."

The Elevator Pitch

For the two people in the science blogosphere who missed it, here's what happened. Rebecca Watson, founder of the Skepchick website and co-host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, put up a "vlog" describing her recent trip to attend a meeting of atheists in Dublin, Ireland, where she was speaking on (of all things) gender issues in the skeptical community. (Full disclosure: I know Watson slightly, and like her, although we're not BFFs; I mean, we're not braiding each other's hair every Saturday night.)

Towards the end of the video, she casually related her discomfort at being approached in an elevator at 4 AM by an intoxicated Irish guy, who asked her back to his room "for coffee." Watson wasn't hysterical, or raving, or even angry. (You can see for yourself here. It starts at the 4:30 mark.) She simply said, "Look, guys -- don't do that. It makes me very uncomfortable," and briefly outlined the reasons why.

You'd think she'd castrated the poor guy on tape and held up his severed member as a trophy, the way some people over-reacted. I won't bother rehashing the various arguments, or my own thoughts on the matter, which have already been well expressed by John Rennie, Lindsey Beyerstein, Isis Scientist, the pseudonymous "Ryawesome" (who wins the prize for Most Colorfully Profane blog post title: "Frankly, atheists, skeptics, you're embarrassing as fuck"), and Watson herself. (Watson is also featured in this week's Point of Inquiry podcast.) Suffice to say, emotions were running high, and I waded through the ensuing comment threads with a growing sense of dismay, then anger, then outright revulsion at many of the opinions being expressed.

Watson was vilified for over-reacting, for being a diva, a "media-whore," an attention-monger, a bitch, a man-hating feminazi, and a troublemaker who was deflecting attention away from far more important issues. She was accused of being anti-sex (as if), calling all men rapists (she did not), and was threatened with sexual assault at the upcoming TAM "to give you something to complain about." (Being threatened with rape is not a new experience for Watson, alas.)

Those who spoke up and came to her defense received similar treatment -- including a couple of women who had survivedsexual assaults. I was tempted to make a bingo card based on Derailing for Dummies and start checking off each hopelessly cliched argument designed to protect those with privilege from having to acknowledge the problem.

It pretty much mirrored every Internet comment thread (follow that link for a terrific comic by Gabby Schulz) that ensues whenever a woman, however diplomatically, dares to raise the issue of sexist behavior, with one crucial difference: Watson was being attacked by members of her own community, who prided themselves on their rationality and critical thinking -- in short, by the very people who should have had her back.

Here is the message being sent to the women skeptics and atheists say they want to join their ranks: "If an atheist/skeptic man behaves boorishly toward you, or refuses to respect your boundaries, whether social or sexual, and you have the gall to state firmly that this is not okay, you will be publicly pilloried, ridiculed for being hysterical, called a man-hating feminazi (or worse), and have your concerns belittled and dismissed."

Why should I, or any woman, want to be part of that community?

Let me be clear: I like men, and enjoy their company. I write about physics for a living, and earned a black belt in jujitsu by training in a mostly all-male dojo in Brooklyn back when I still lived in New York City. Plus I spent the last two years working to bridge the gap between science and Hollywood (still very much a patriarchy, especially when it comes to film). I am very comfortable in male-dominated environments, and accustomed to being the only woman in the room. And yet I have had far more negative experiences with men in the skeptic/atheist community than anywhere else.

Case in point: When I spoke two years ago at TAM7, I was flooded afterwards with friend requests on Facebook from the skeptical community. It was initially kind of gratifying, and I pretty much accepted them all, provided they weren't using obvious pseudonyms. Most of my interactions on Facebook have been positive, but there have been a dozen or so instances over the last two years where a man has become obnoxious, offensive, overbearing, overly flirtatious, or just plain creepy about personal boundaries, forcing me to defriend him. With one exception, they were all from the skeptic/atheist community. I now rarely accept Facebook friend requests from skeptic/atheist men. No, it isn't "fair." But even though 98% of them are probably very nice guys, I just don't have the time to comb through each profile, trying to ferret out clues as to who is most likely to tweak out on me unexpectedly.

So believe me when I tell you that the skeptic/atheist community has a serious problem when it comes to creating a welcoming environment for women. The APS lists causes of concern in an academic department that are indicative of a chilly climate. Guess what tops the list? "Denial that such issues do matter to people." And further down the list: "Derogatory comments about female faculty to reduce their ability to bring about change. Branding faculty as 'difficult' or 'troublemaker.'"

Manifesto for Change

It doesn't have to be this way; as Sandler discovered, this is changeable behavior. That's why I'm offering a Manifesto for Change, and I challenge those in the skeptic/atheist community to implement its principles.

(1) Ladies: even though you might not feel 100% welcome, grit your teeth and show up anyway, because there is power in numbers. Studies have shown that these chilling effects start to dissipate as communities approach 50/50 gender ratios. I showed up anyway, and I'm glad I did, because I could see firsthand how much has changed since I last attended TAM. TAM9 had markedly more women in the audience (around 40%), and half the speakers were women. I was the only woman speaker at TAM7 two years ago. That is tremendous progress in a very short time, and the willingness of Watson and her fellow "skepchicks" to show up, speak out, and endure the inevitable slings and arrows cast their way played a key role in making it happen.

(2) There are also women out there who do not believe this is an issue because they haven't personally experienced it, or have experienced things they feel are far worse. Please do not diminish the experiences and emotions of your sisters in skepticism. Remain open to the possibility that you, too, might be unconsciously influenced by cultural baggage.

A few years ago, Bernice Sandler realized that she had a bad habit of checking her watch during talks or panel discussions -- but she only checked her watch when women were speaking. That's how deeply ingrained these cultural attitudes can be: even a woman like Sandler, who has spent her career fighting for gender equality, can fall victim to the subtle assumption that men's voices are more valuable than those of women. She recognized her behavior, and actively worked to change it: "Now I only check my watch when I'm speaking." Little things matter.

(3) Foster top-down change. Leadership, especially male leadership, needs to set the tone for what is and is not acceptable in a community. The 2007 APS report quotes Virginia Tech's Patricia Hyer on this: "The voices of male heads ... can carry great weight in moving forward an institutional change agenda, especially if they use their access to institutional leaders and personal prestige to make the case for gender equity." (Richard Dawkins, are you listening?)

JREF president DJ Grothe did just that when, a few days before TAM9, he openly addressed the rift caused by "Elevatorgate" and made it clear that unwanted sexual advances or other harassing behavior were unacceptable, and grounds for being ejected from the conference. Grothe also deserves credit for making diversity a priority in his selection of speakers and topic. That's the mark of a true leader, and the JREF is lucky to have him. Kudos, also, to Big Name skeptics like Phil Plait, PZ Myers, Josh Rosenau, Greg Laden and others who spoke up eloquently in support of Watson.

(4) Foster bottom-up change. Men at the grassroots level need to reinforce the leadership position and make it clear to their peers that such behavior is unacceptable. As former APS president Judy Franz said in the 2007 APS report, "If you make all your women ... feel more valued by your speech and actions ... and if you publicly chastise those that make demeaning or snide comments, you will find the rewards are great."

Guys, why wouldn't you do this for people you claim to value and respect? These women are smart, sassy, strong, and yes, sexy. They're amazing. And they're your sisters in arms. It's time to step up and start acting like brothers. The next time you see a guy acting like a jerk around a woman at a skeptic/atheist gathering, call him out: "Dude. Not cool. She's not the hot girl in the comic shop, you know." Feel free to quote The Social Network: "You're going to go through life thinking girls don't like you cuz you're a nerd, when really it's because you're an asshole."

If a woman calls you out on your behavior, instead of getting angry and defensive, just say, "Wow, I never thought of it like that. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. It wasn't intentional." Cop to the behavior, and we can all move on. Or just be like that anonymous guy at Watson's TAM9 quiz show event; as Watson took the stage, he shouted, "WE RESPECT WOMEN'S VOICES SO HARD!"

Follow the manifesto, and you will continue to see your community change for the better as more and more women (and other under-represented groups as well, because these principles can be broadly applied) feel welcome in your midst. And who knows? Maybe at next year's TAM, Rebecca Watson will finally get the public apology she so richly deserves.

Jen-Luc Piquant and I are heading out to Oregon State University today, as I am a featured speaker at OSU's first Sonia Kovaleskaya Mathematics Day, honoring the prominent Russian female mathematician of the same name. The aim is to inspire "middle school students, with an emphasis on young women, to explore the wonderful world of mathematics through fun activities and exciting talks." I'm hoping to convince the kids not to be like me, but to learn to love and appreciate math while they still have a chance to master it -- you know, before grown-up life gets in the way. So if you're in the area, come say hello and bring a young girl who needs math-y inspiration with you. Of course, this means we must dispense with the usual round of weekend linkage, but that's okay: you can all your fellow party goers about Sonya instead. (Full disclosure: The following is a slight adaptation of a prior blog post about this amazing woman.)

Sonya Kovalevsky was a Russian woman who was a protege of the Swedish mathematician Gosta Mittag-Leffler, founder of the journal Acta Mathematica. (Lengthy side note: The question of how to refer to women scientists is a thorny one -- by first name? last name? married name? Plus, she is sometimes referenced as Sofia Kovaleskaya, because no self-respecting 19th century person of Russian descent would have any fewer than three forms of their name, including nicknames. It's all very confusing. So henceforth, she shall be Sonya.) She was a fascinating, admirable woman, whose story doesn't deserve to be gathering dust in the faded archives of scientific history.

Most online entries dutifully cite her list of accomplishments: first woman member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (although still unable to attend actual meetings because of her gender); first modern European woman to attain a full professorship; established the first significant result in the general theory of partial differential equations; and winner of the prestigious Prix Bordin.

She was also a gifted writer (of both novels and magazine articles), and often quoted thusly: "Many who have never had occasion to learn what mathematics is confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it a dry and arid science. In reality, however, it is the science which demands the utmost imagination.... It seems to me that the poet must see what others do not see, must look deeper than others look. And the mathematician must do the same thing."

I wasn't surprised to learn that Sonya was a product of Russia's privileged class, the daughter of a military officer and landowner; her mother was the granddaughter of a Russian astronomer. Education was such a taboo for women, even in the mid-19th century, that only those women who moved in rarefied aristocratic circles were exposed to intellectual pursuits . "All my life I have been unable to decide for which I had the greater inclination, mathematics or literature," Sonya wrote in her autobiography, recognizing that because of her educational opportunities, she'd had a choice. Not that those opportunities were especially stellar: like most early women in math and science, she was doggedly persistent about vaulting over the many obstacles "Society" sought to erect in her path.

Sonya's interest in math was sparked by an eccentric uncle, who taught her chess and discussed all kinds of abstract concepts with her: "squaring the circle, asymptotes, and other things that were unintelligible to me and yet seemed mysterious and at the same time deeply attractive." When her room was redecorated at age 11, there wasn't enough wallpaper to complete the project, so one wall was temporarily papered with her father's old calculus lecture notes from college.

Initially the symbols were little more than hieroglyphics to her, but after reflecting on them night after night, she began making connections between the symbols and the concepts she discussed with her uncle. Another 19th century mathematician, Mary Somerville, had a similar breakthrough around the same age: she stumbled upon algebraic symbols while perusing a puzzle in a magazine, also igniting a lifelong thirst to know more. And like Somerville, Sonya's father eventually grew dismayed at his daughter's "unfeminine" interests and tried to put a stop to them. ("We shall have young Mary in a straitjacket one of these days," Somerville's father supposedly lamented.)

Somerville continued to study by candlelight, and when her father confiscated her candles, she memorized texts during the day and worked out problems in her head at night.

The family of French mathematician Sophie Germain -- inventor of "Germain primes," i.e., double a Germain prime and add 1 to get another prime number -- used a similar tactic to dissuade their equally precocious daughter from studying geometry, algebra and calculus... to no avail. Sonya also studied under the covers at night, borrowing an algebra textbook from one of her tutors.

Then a neighbor, who taught science, gave the family a copy of a basic physics book he'd written. Sonya turned to the section on optics, and discovered trigonometry. Even though she'd never encountered it before, she managed to make sense of the derivations for small angles by substituting "a chord for the mysterious sine." In short, she independently rediscovered the same method by which the whole concept of a sine had been developed historically. Impressed, the neighbor convinced Sonya's father to let her study analytic geometry and calculus privately in St. Petersburg. She mastered both subjects in a single winter. Her astonished tutor noted that it was almost as if she'd known the concepts in advance.

Someone with such a formidable innate aptitude couldn't be satisfied for long with simple calculus, but Sonya's opportunities for further study were severely limited because of her gender. She entered into a marriage of convenience with a young paleontologist named Vladimir Kovalevsky, and the couple moved to Heidelberg, Germany. She still couldn't formally enroll in a university, but she managed to get permission to "unofficially" attend lectures by some of the foremost scientists in Europe. In that respect, she fared a bit better initially than Germain, who was forced at one point to impersonate a male student who had passed away in order to study with Joseph LaGrange (via correspondence) at L'Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. But in both cases, the women performed so spectacularly that they won the admiration and mentorship of prominent men: LaGrange and later Carl Friedrich Gauss, in German's case, and Karl Weierstrass (and, later, Mittag-Leffler) in Sonya's case.

At the time he was the most renowned German mathematician, a professor at the University of Berlin. Sonya came to him bearing glowing recommendations from her Heidelberg professors, yet even then, he was skeptical, and far from enthusiastic about taking her on. To discourage the young woman, he gave her a set of problems he'd prepared for his most advanced students, assuming she'd never make sense of them. Instead, she solved them in record time; not only that, her solutions were clear and original, demonstrating a grasp of the material lacking in most of his male students (Mittag-Leffler being one notable exception). So he agreed to teach her privately, and came to consider her among the most brilliant and promising of all his students.

Sonya didn't disappoint her mentor. By the age of 25, she had produced three original papers, each of which was deemed worthy of a PhD degree: one on the shape of Saturn's rings, another on elliptical integrals, and a third on partial differential equations. Not that Berlin would ever award a woman a PhD, especially one that had never been officially matriculated. Anywhere. (And how could she possibly matriculate when they wouldn't allow it? Yes. Exactly.) To his credit, Weierstrass fought for her, eventually convincing the University of Gottingen to award her a PhD in mathematics, summa cum laude.

I would like to tell you this story has a happy ending, or at least that Sonya's intellectual struggles ended with her PhD. Alas, such is not quite the case. She and Vladimir returned to Russia, where she found she could only get a job teaching basic arithmetic at a girl's elementary school. The irony wasn't lost on her: "I was, unfortunately, weak in the multiplication tables," she acidly observed in her memoirs.

Instead, she began reviewing theater performances and writing articles about science and technology for a local newspaper, as well as starting a novel. And her platonic marriage mysteriously turned non-platonic: she gave birth to a daughter during this period, too. That didn't make the marriage a happy one. Eventually she left Vladimir and moved first to France, and then Stockholm, when the university there offered her a probationary position, thanks to the urging of Mittag-Leffler. By then, she was a widow: Vladimir had committed suicide, distraught and depressed over his many failed business ventures, among other things.

Sonya, in contrast, proved so popular with her students that she was given a five-year professorship at Stockholm, and also became an editor of Acta Mathematica. In 1888, she reached the pinnacle of her career when she won the French Academy of Sciences' prestigious Prix Bordin for her treatise, On the Problem of the Rotation of a Solid Body About a Fixed Point. They might have excluded her from the competition on the basis of gender -- the French Academy was far from welcoming, as Sophie Germain could attest -- but the papers were all submitted anonymously and the judges weren't aware they'd selected a woman until it was, as it were, "too late." Still, so impressed were they by her work that they actually doubled the prize. It seems too cruel a twist of fate that, only three years later, she succumbed to pneumonia following an influenza epidemic.

By now we hope you're convinced that Sonya deserves wider repute. I'm delighted to be celebrating her accomplishments, and those of all the other women before and after who defied conventional stereotypes and social pressures to pursue the subjects they loved.

I've been at the National Association of Science Writers meeting all weekend (on Twitter: #sciwrite10), and will get around to blogging about that and Cool Science later in the week. But for now, I'm still on the road, and deadlines beckon. So here's a snarky humor piece from 2008, riffing on an earlier piece that went on to spawn evenmoreversions. I expect the meme will flare up again one of these years, just like all those Friday the 13th movies.

Good Internet humor never really dies; it just languishes for awhile in the dusty archives until a new crop of browsers stumbles upon its cheeky goodness. Such is the case with Simon Dedeo's "Physical Theories as Women" essay on the McSweeney's Website, which has been making the rounds again in the science blogosphere. (At least, the Spousal Unit assures us it's an older article, and he, like, knows Dedeo from their Windy City days.) Far be it for us to take umbrage at the amusing characterizations of our gender contained therein -- c'mon, we all know those stereotypical females exist in one form or another. But I do think, in the interests of fair play, the women should have their own version while we're having fun with the battle of the sexes.

Ergo, I offer today's frivolous blog post: "Physical Theories as Men." And I offer it with a disclaimer: Any similarity to actual events or persons, living or dead, is sheer coincidence, and greatly exaggerated for comic effect. Except for the Irish artist. That totally happened.

0. Newtonian gravity is that guy you had a crush on in high school. You never really dated, but you spent a lot of time together, and once you even made out in the science lab after school over a partially dissected fetal pig. It didn't go well. Things were kinda awkward after that, but you remained friendly from a distance. Or so you thought. Years later, you find out he told everyone you were a frigid lesbian -- even though he was the one who wouldn't go past second base because he "respected" you too much. To paraphrase Whistler, the helpful demon from Buffy (Season 2): "Newtonian gravity is like dating a nun. You're never gonna get the good stuff." You suspect he may have been gay.

1. Electrodynamics is your first real boyfriend, and all your friends swear he's quite the catch: well-educated, ambitious, clean-cut, amusing, great chemistry, plus you love his mom. Alas, he is Mr. Traditional Family Values, and you are still going through your experimental "finding yourself" phase -- frankly, you're just not ready to settle down. Sure, opposites attract and make the sparks fly, but there has to be some complementary areas, too. You think he cares too much about what other people think. Your electro-shock blue Mohawk and multiple body piercings pretty much take you out of the running for Long-Term Potential, given his conservatism and career ambitions. When your differences become too great, you chalk it up to life lessons learned and move on to greener pastures.

2. Special Relativity is the wild, free-thinking rebel intent on smashing all those outmoded "rules" that say he can't go faster than the speed of light -- preferably while listening to the dulcet tones of The Sex Pistols and Rage Against the Machine. He's colorful, exciting and just a wee bit dangerous after the rather plodding predictability of Newtonian gravity and electrodynamics. So you fall for the flash -- at first. But after awhile, his inability to sit still wears thin. It seems the more he rushes about, the more constricted you feel, and your "dates" just seem to stretch on for eternity. The sex isn't all that great, either, frankly: you've never been a size queen, but a girl's still got standards, and length contraction has clearly taken its toll.

3. Quantum Mechanics is that weird, nutty counter-culture guy who's always got his finger on the pulse of the Latest Thing, before it hits the mainstream and "sells out." He just can't commit -- not to you, not to anything. Sometimes you're not sure you even know who he is, because every time you try to study him closely, he changes. Is he a particle or a wave? Aquarius, or Pisces (he swears he was born on the cusp)? Good guy or spherical bastard (or perhaps an asymmetrical asshole)? Gay or straight, or rabidly omni-sexual? You spend months, sometimes years, fretting over this romantic superposition of states. When the wave function finally collapses, it's never in your favor. He makes you feel hopelessly mainstream.

4. General Relativity is the solid salt-of-the-earth type of guy that you know you should probably be crazy about -- especially after that jerkwad quantum mechanics shattered your heart into a million pieces. You have a good time with him: he's smart, orderly, disciplined, and can bend and warp with the flow when life gets too heavy. But there's just no romantic spark there, and a dire lack of physical chemistry. Face it: you're not in love. It seems a cruel, cruel irony.

5. Quantum Field Theory is that scruffy wannabe Irish artist spending the summer in New York City mooching off various acquaintances and far-too-trusting females. He actually brags about being on the dole back in London. That should have been your first clue. But he's cute, and smart, with a lilting Irish brogue, and makes you look at Rauschenberg with fresh appreciative eyes, although you still think Ellsworth Kelly is a crock. You decide he's worth a tumble, because it's been awhile, plus he assures you he's going back home in a couple of days and you need never see him again.

Alas, he gets so drunk telling you all this, spinning his web of deceit, that when you finally get down to business, he literally passes out on top of you -- in flagrante delicto. This, after you paid for all those drinks because he didn't have any cash and his credit cards were maxed out to the limit. You console yourself by recalling that the same thing happens to Liv Tyler's character in Stealing Beauty. Two weeks later, you run into him at an art-house film festival with another girl in tow. He pretends not to know you. It's not like you were all that into the guy, but your pride takes a bit of a beating. Quantum field theory is a cheap, lying bastard. And they're saving a chair for him in Alcoholics Anonymous.

6. Analytical Classical Mechanics is the self-absorbed, older intellectual that you date because you've decided you're tired of immature physical theories who refuse to grow up and take some responsibility. He's a bit pretentious and likes to pontificate about science as a social construct. He's also a snob: he listens only to classical music, and despises all popular culture (excepting the films of Ingmar Bergman). You know, the type that brags about not owning a TV whenever one of your pals mentions their favorite program. This gets awfully tedious very quickly and you start to get snippy and irritable. Sensing your boredom, he dumps you first, condescendingly assuring you that "one day you'll understand," and get over the heartbreak. In fact, you feel liberated and celebrate with pitchers of margaritas and a marathon viewing of MacGuyver.

7. String Theory is the sensitive, complex emo guy with an impossibly brilliant mind and lots of emotional problems. In fact, he's been in therapy practically since birth. He constantly complains that nobody understands him, and he's right: sometimes it's like he's speaking an entirely different language. You're fascinated because he's got so many dimensional levels and seems to vibrate with a mysterious energy. Besides, you think you can help him overcome his intractable problems. You are deluding yourself. His interest in your simplistic three-spatial-dimensioned presence wanes in record time, and he starts passively-aggressively acting out. You suspect he wants to break up with you but just doesn't have the balls to say so. He denies this when you confront him, insisting you can "work things out," but then you find out he's been having a fling with Loop Quantum Gravity, after swearing he hates her GUTs.

8. And Cosmology? Well duh. That's the guy you marry. Because you know he sees the Big Picture, and he'll be in it for the long haul.

Well after Groundhog Day, the cocktail party's founder, long in absentia, emerges from under her nice shady rock, rubs her eyes and blinks in the bright sunshine, and demands a mint julep for her trouble. Okay, a mojito or pisco sour will do just as well. I just need a bracing pick-me-up after being deluged for weeks on end, with no time for blogging (although I have been hoisting the bloggy banner, still, over at Twisted Physics). My fellow bloggers have been equally under the gun; if it weren't for the intrepid Lee, we might have gone dark completely the last few months!

Sure, the new job is uber-demanding, but the Spousal Unit and I decided things weren't insane enough with his-and-hers book-writin', his ongoing physics research, and my matchmaking between Hollywood and science, and thereby embarked on a home-buying adventure. In the current economic climate, such a path is fraught with anxiety-inducing peril. Yet we have emerged victorious and are moving into our new townhouse in Echo Park this Friday. And I have a new assistant starting on Monday to relieve some of the administrative pressures of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. (Jen-Luc Piquant has been AWOL shooting her own cyber-movie but she assures me she'll be moving into post-production next week, so everyone will be back on board!)

There are umpteen topics for future blog posts in the works; my fodder file runneth over. But I had to re-emerge from my unplanned blogospheric exile to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day. For those not "in the know," Ada (as I prefer to think of her) was known in her day as "the enchantress of numbers," and helped inventor Charles Babbage refine his designs for his thinking machines -- precursors to our modern computers, way back in the 19th century.

Babbage was pretty eccentric -- a typical inventor -- and people tended to love or hate him. He was an ugly, toad-like man, according to contemporary accounts. Indeed, the poet Thomas Carlyle (one of the loathers) described him as "a cross between a frog and viper." Charles Darwin, however, was a fan. And so was young Ada Lovelace, who counted among the rare few to fully grasp the significance of Babbage's "thinking machines" while others were ridiculing the single-minded little man for his obsession.

Ada was a rare creature for her day; women just weren't encouraged to study math or the sciences; it was just too, too unfeminine, don't you know, and really dashed a girl's marriage prospects in the bargain. No sane man wanted a brainiac for a wife in Victorian England. But Ada had a few things going for her: first, she had a privileged position in society, being the daughter of the famed Romantic poet Lord Byron and a well-born mother.

However, she never actually knew her father; her mother's family saw to that. They didn't want the nefarious Byron wanton-ness rubbing off on the young girl. That's the second reason she had an advantage: to counter the perceived "wilder" aspects of her character inherited from the dissolute poet, young Ada was actually encouraged to study math and science. Those subjects were believed to have a tempering effect on "Romantic excesses."

Finally, she had a strong role model in Mary Somerville, the so-called "Queen of Science," her overcame her own family's objections to become a great populizer of scientific treatises by LaPlace ad Newton, for example. Somerville was one of the first women to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society (the other was Caroline Herschel, sister to famed astronomer William Herschel), and took young Ada under her wing.

For all her accomplishments, however, Somerville still had very traditional ideas. She encouraged Ada to work at sewing, not just sums, insisting that "a mathematician can do other things besides studying x's and y's." (True enough, but it's telling that Somerville didn't encourage Ada to, say, become a detective, or a ship's captain, or even a lowly actuary -- roles traditionally reserved for men.) Ada, in contrast, embraced her literary lineage and called herself a "poetical scientist," one who united reason with imagination. She dreamed of developing a "calculus of the nervous system", demonstrating mathematically "how the brain gives rise to thought, and nerves give rise to feelings." She fell short of that vsionary goal, but that's why she found Babbage's work so compelling.

In the end, alas, poor Ada did prove to have inherited some fraction of the Byron wildness. Benjamin Woolley's excellent biography, The Bride of Science, poignantly recounts the more tragic aspects of Ada's life, including ill-fated love affairs and near-elopement. By 1851, she'd figured out that her math skills could be useful in betting on horses, devising an elaborate gambling scheme that proved disastrous; she lost a great deal of money on those ponies. And she died in her thirties of ovarian cancer. She certainly deserves some measure of honor in the historical pantheon of women in math and science.

But Ada Lovelace Day isn't just about honoring Ada herself. The idea is also to honor other women scientists and mathematicians who bucked social pressures to follow their bliss. There are any number of good candidates to choose from -- hell, every woman physicist I know is a candidate, including co-blogger Diandra -- but upon reflection, I'd like to take this opportunity to honor Shirley Jackson, currently president of Rensselaer Institute of Technology in Troy, NY, right next to Albany. She has the distinction of being the first black woman to earn a PhD in physics from MIT, back in 1973 -- just one of a lifetime of "firsts." I wrote a profile of Jackson back in 2000 for Industrial Physicist magazine, and traveled up to RPI for an in-person interview. I've never forgotten it; Jackson was that extraordinary.

The daughter of a postal supervisor and a social worker, Jackson inherited her father's acumen in math, and both parents fostered her innate curiosity. She designed her own scientific experiments in the family's backyard as a child -- all of Nature was her laboratory. She conducted nutritional experiments on mice (her father built the cages for the little creatures) and kept honeybees under the family porch, adjusting their habitats, diets and exposure to light and logging in her observations in a journal. She has compared experimentation to "a good mystery novel, a tangible unfolding narrative of what [makes] Nature tick.... And best of all, I was at the controls... changing the plot and scenery according to the directions of my own interests."

Jackson proved to be a stellar student, one of only two black women admitted to MIT in 1964. If you just charted her rise by perusing her resume, she moved easily from success to success: a PhD in elementary particle physics, postdocs at Fermilab and SLAC, then a switch to condensed matter physics and a few years at Bell Labs studying the behavior of electrons on the surface of liquid helium films.

From there, she branched out into public service -- "I'd always been raised to believe that if one had talent and opportunity, one should not be striving strictly for oneself," she told me -- chairing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But she missed interacting with students, and accepted the presidency of RPI, where she has reigned with grace and aplomb for nearly a decade. (In fact, she just voluntarily took a 5% pay cut, donating the savings to a student scholarship fund to cope with the current nasty economic environment. AIG scumbags, take notice!)

However, "It hasn't always been a smooth road for her, and people don't often see that aspect," MIT physicist Milly Dresselhaus told me back in 2000. Dresselhaus was Jackson's mentor at MIT back in the 1960s; even as a professor, there were plenty of male students who refused to take physics from a woman. Dresselhaus persevered, and so did Jackson, despite social isolation -- nobody would be her study partner -- verbal abuse, and even a vague reference to a "shooting incident."

Jackson was understandably reluctant to dwell too much on the pain and injustices of the past in our interview, and I hated having to even ask such questions -- basically amounting to, "So, um, what's it like to be black, and a woman, at MIT in the 1960s?" (Answer: not a hell of a lot of fun!) In a fair and just world, this would simply not be relevant; but we do not live in a fair and just world. So I asked those questions -- awkward, embarrassed, stymied by white liberal guilt, and resenting the questions on her behalf -- and Jackson graciously answered, choosing her words carefully, gently setting the neophyte science writer straight on a few things about life as the ultimate "Other" in physics.

Honestly, I was impressed by her lack of bitterness. It had to have been lonely, not to mention discouraging. One of her professors actually advised her that "colored girls should learn a trade." Jackson didn't take that advice, but she did acquire some measure of perspective by volunteering (in her copious spare time -- not!) at Boston City Hospital's pediatrics unit, to better "understand what real trouble is." And she kept at her studies, because "If I give up, what have I done but allow the other guy to win?"

One of my favorite anecdotes was one she told to illustrate why it's important not to be too easily offended. Sometimes what seems like overt racism/sexism is simply poor social skills or awkward phrasing (we all suffer sometimes from foot-in-mouth syndrome). Case in point: she applied for a summer job at MIT in a physics lab as an undergraduate. She didn't have any specific lab experience, but the professor asked, "Well, can you cook?" When she said yes, he told her she was hired. Jackson, confused, replied, "To do what?" It was not, as it happens, to whip up some tasty grits for his breakfast each morning; rather, the professor assumed that if she could cook, she had the practical skills necessary to learn her way easily around the lab.

I also liked Jackson's take on affirmative action; at the time, it had become synonymous with meeting racial quotes regardless of merit, and many women and minorities disliked being tagged as someone with an unfair advantage. Of course, the whole point of affirmative action was to promote a more level playing field. Jackson certainly benefited from affirmative action (although it did not make her journey any easier from a socio-political standapoint). She prefers to talk about "affirmative outreach," a phrase that preserves the original altruistic intent of the policy while removing the stigma of favored treatment.

Some kind of policy was needed; women in math and science (especially hard sciences like physics) have historically been incredibly rare, and even 50 years ago, their percentages were in the low single digits. The numbers aren't as dire as they used to be. Back in 1975, for instance, lss than 8 percent of bachelor's degrees in physics went to women. By 2002, that number had risen to 22%. And the number of physics PhDs earned by women has climbed from less than 4% in 1975 to around 15% in 2002. (There are probably more current statistics available from the American Institute of Physics, which regularly tracks these demographics.)

The number of women physicists who are also black? You can probably count them on your fingers and toes. If they are more numerous today, it's because Shirley Jackson and other courageous women like her blazed a trail and gave young girls the role models they needed to believe they could succeed. Jackson always quotes her father to her students: "Aim for the stars so that you can reach the treetops." That is, if you don't aim high, you don't go very far. Aim high, my sisters. Be strong.

I thought I'd start out the new year with a little old news and and old, old rant. Just let me just get on my flameproof suit before I get going. Please read carefully before you turn on the flamethrower. A little background, first. I recently decided to give up my ties to organized religion without completely eschewing some sort of spirituality (though that's not the current topic), and one of the reasons I finally got fed up was the rampant misogyny and exclusivity practiced by most organized religion. In short, I got tired of being told that because my 23rd chromosome pair happened to by XX and not XY and my genitalia internal rather than external, that I was somehow unfit for duty.

It's
not just religion, obviously, that's misogynistic, but it's always been
interesting to me that this is one of the characteristics that religion
and science—often so antithetical to each other—share, and for so many
of the same reasons. Of course, this is because both spring out of the culture around them and are carried out and structured by the people in
that culture who have the power to make the structure. Need I say that for thousands of this years, this has been, almost exclusively, men? So if men decide
women are too inferior in whatever way to have a personal relationship
with God either through study of the texts or through participating in
the mysteries (exemplified by Milton's "He for God only, she for God in him.") little
wonder scientists should (even unconsciously) think the same way about what many see as a new, improved replacement system.

The reasoning, though, is strikingly similar and you'd think
male scientists would pay more attention to that. Of course, it's to their
advantage not to. It's convenient for them to claim that women's brains
are not made for math (an old saw rapidly being dulled) or that we
don't do science the way it "should be done," i.e., the way men do it.
Probably true, but not necessarily bad or wrong. Just different. I'm
not talking about the scientific method here, but about the culture of
science and the way men and women approach problem-solving. This is a factor not just in the scientific establishment, but in medicine and business as well.

And of course, there are social and cultural pressures on women now
that men don't have to deal with, as the Gender Equity report by the American Physical
Society (pdf) I recently helped edit shows quite clearly. This is a factor just as often conveniently forgotten
in the interpretations of key scriptures that seem to ban women from
positions of authority in the church, while just as conveniently
ignoring the scriptures that show them in those positions.

There are also some striking similarities between the two areas in
their jealous guarding of knowledge. In both cases, men are are
frequently the gatekeepers of the more esoteric aspects of knowledge
(see, physicists), intentionally or unintentionally. Personally, I
think this is partly because guys like secret societies and all that. They're
forever making exclusionary clubs, from the Royal Society to the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks.
But religion and science are public endeavors, affecting all of us.
(Just look at the Evangelical Right's influence on elections in the
U.S., if you don't believe me.) Faith that asks no questions is merely
blind, stupid obedience; science that allows no free sharing of
knowledge is not just bad science, but dangerously blind itself. In both
cases the idea that "it's too complicated for you to understand" is
used to keep the general public from asking uncomfortable questions:
"Why is Junia, a woman, called an apostle?" or, "What are we going to do with the waste generated by nuclear power?" Ultimately, both science and religion are closely bound up in the culture, politics, and social mores of the society around them and reflect those values. Claiming that either of them is neutral or value-free is delusional.

All this is by way of saying that Richard Dawkins' selection of writers for the new Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
is damned odd, if not downright insulting. For one thing, there's nary a mere science writer among
them; they're almost all scientists, even Rachel Carson, who started
her career as a biologist. This is one example of the "father knows
best" attitude so many scientists have toward the public: only
scientists can truly communicate the beauty and wonder and complexity
of science to the rest of you ninnies. This is far from the truth. It
is, in fact, usually a hell of a lot easier to teach good writers about science
than it is to teach most scientists to write well, particularly for the
public. Most of them have a tendency to include too many advanced
details that chase people away, rather than broad, interesting ideas
that draw them in. My fellow Cocktail Party Physics blogger Jen
waxes eloquent about this frequently in our conversations and here on the blog. The advanced
details are important, but you don't start out with those for people
with no or little background in the subject, and getting the concepts
if you're not a scientist is far more important than understanding the
technical details right away. Scientists often have a bad case of
"can't see the forest for the trees" when it comes to writing for the
public, particularly in their own subject.

And, of course, there are too few women, three, to be precise: biologist Rachel Carson, Helena Cronin,
a philosopher who works in sex selection (and who happens to think
there are more smart men than smart women—to be fair, she also thinks
there are more dumb men than dumb women); and Barbara Gamow, not a
scientist, but wife of physicist George Gamow,
who is included because of the poem she wrote in response to one of
George's lectures. How cute. I say this not to denigrate Barbara Gamow,
who was, like many women married to male scientists, extremely
supportive of her husband's work and no doubt a sounding board for it,
but to illustrate the attitude prevalent about women's role in science (which oddly reflects their view of women's place in art, too):
strictly supportive; observer not participator; muse not partner.

Hawkins' selection is pretty heavy on evolution (no surprise, given
that he's an evolutionary biologist), genetics (again, no surprise),
physics, neuroscience, and biological systems. There's not much
chemistry, straight-up biology, medicine, and no ocean science or any
of the so-called "soft" sciences like sociology or anthropology. If what
he was aiming for was a balanced picture of the wonders of modern
science, this book is hardly that, but it's not even a balanced picture
of the best science writing. Like the hard sciences, it's very male-dominated (and white males at that). Enough with Peter Medawar already.
He's not that brilliant. He's taking up space with his multiple
selections that could easily have been given to a woman or two,
scientist or not.

Dawkins could have done much for women scientists everywhere by
recognizing their work in this volume. Instead, he just dragged out a lot of
the old war horses: Eiseley, Watson & Crick, Gould, Thomas, Hoyle,
Haldane, Snow. That's fine to a point in an anthology like this. One does need to
include the classics and the big guns like Hawking and Einstein. But if
you're
going to include the likes of Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, Brian
Greene, Lee Smolin and Kenneth Ford (Full disclosure: I used to work for him), all fine choices in their own right, then you
need to include some contemporary women scientists or science writers too, dammit. If we want science to matter to everyone, we have to include everyone.

Why make a fuss over this? Because this is how women (and minorities) are
systematically pushed out of history and out of the present consciousness, in exactly the same way we were
pushed out of recognition of a place in the early church: simply by excluding us first from memory and then from the party itself. That's all it takes. Just ignore us. But don't expect us to like it. Or to keep quiet about it.

I found myself chuckling in amused recognition on Sunday while reading Rebecca Solnit's Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, "Men Who Explain Things." Solnit, for those unfamiliar with her work, is the author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, among other tomes. Her Op-Ed is a wry commentary on a familiar phenomenon, per the subhead: "Every woman knows what it's like to be patronized by a guy who won't let facts get in the way." She opens with the story of an upscale party at a chalet in Aspen; most of the guests were old enough that she, in her 40s, was considered quite young. So perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising when the host mentioned he'd heard she'd written a couple of books, and condescendingly asked what they might be about, "in the way you encourage your friend's 7-year-old to describe flute practice."

Solnit has actually written six or seven books, but rather than give him a laundry list -- correctly guessing he was less interested in her work than in figuring out how he could use the topic to jump-start his own literary soliloquy -- she started to tell him about the latest book (published in 2003), on Muybridge. In record time, her host interrupted and proceeded to expound at length on the "very important" Muybridge book that had been published that year, which she really must read if she was interested in Muybridge, and launched into a summation of that revered tome for her edification. His soliloquy was delivered "with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority." (That Solnit has quite a way with words, doesn't she?) Not even the news that Solnit had written the "very important" book he was pontificating about was enough to dissuade him for long, beyond a moment of ashen-faced embarrassment. Small wonder he couldn't remember her name. He had not, it turned out, actually read the book on which he was holding forth with such authority. He'd merely skimmed an article about it in The New York Times Book Review.

Now, this sort of unmasked literary pretension is quite common in certain pseudo-intellectual circles, and is not gender-specific per se. (Frankly, certain women can be just as preening and pretentious, with the same need to hold center stage. They can also be absolutely brutal when it comes to the art of diminishing the stature of perceived rivals via the subtly condescending put-down.) Solnit is very careful to point out that she is not describing all men, only a particularly annoying sub-species, and acknowledges that "my life is well-sprinkled with lovely men... Still, there are these other men, too." Explaining Men are the in-your-face embodiment of what Solnit decries as a much broader "archipelago of arrogance." It bespeaks an underlying attitude towards women as "empty vessel[s] to be filled with their [i.e., men's] wisdom and knowledge," and the worst part is, women themselves often buy into this skewed under-assessment of their relevance and abilities.

"Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about.... Every woman knows what I mean. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating... that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported over-confidence. This syndrome is something nearly every woman faces every day, within herself too, a belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence...."

My own experiences with Explaining Men are a bit more complex, in part because I am a science writer, and thus quite often I want someone to explain something esoteric to me, and welcome the attempt at edification. (It helps that I am naturally curious, too.) In the male-dominated field of physics, that explainer is usually going to be a man -- although the percentage of women is inching upwards every so slowly with each passing decade -- and for the most part, those men have been very decent about it, with a few rare exceptions.

That's not what Solnit is describing, however. She's talking about the sort of patronizing condescension that pervades all kinds of daily interactions between men and women; Men Who Explain Things are among the more benign examples. So I tend to agree in principle with Solnit when she writes, "Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is, and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value...." This harsh reality hit me full force with the publication of my first book a few years ago, and my very first radio interview to promote it: an hour-long call-in program in San Francisco. Something about a former English major thinking she could effectively communicate physics concepts to a general audience stuck in the craw of one cranky male physicist, who called in specifically to harangue me on the air for my chutzpah is daring to presume to "speak for physics" (a claim I never made). He didn't actually call me uppity English major scum, but the implication was clear.

"But surely that had nothing to do with your gender," some of you might be thinking. I suspect it did. After all, he didn't merely take issue with the substance of what I said (the cornerstone of any healthy debate); he questioned my right to say anything publicly on the topic at all.

A similar incident occurred about two months later when I appeared on a radio call-in show in Washington, DC. Another male physicist called in, highly irate, to take issue with my off-the-cuff summation of the uncertainty principle. It was a nitpicky technical point, plus, it was a live show, so for all I knew, I could have mis-spoken, and said so. I hadn't, as it turns out; I'd simplified the explanation for the public radio audience, but within those constraints, it was a perfectly acceptable summation. A couple other male physicists of my acquaintance who heard the show were incensed that the caller had attacked me for no good reason -- and, frankly, a bit disappointed that I hadn't defended myself more aggressively. Mea culpa. I let self-doubt hold sway. The caller claimed to be a physicist, and I was just a first-time author, and a girl at that. Some small part of me just assumed I'd made a mistake, rather than concluding that he was being a jerk.

I have a lot more confidence these days in my right to speak and be heard; now, I'd come out swinging and make mincemeat out of that irate Explaining Man. But three years ago, I was still a bit lacking in confidence, despite all the hard work I'd done to research the book, running all the sample chapters past PhD physicists to check for technical accuracy, and so forth. Even Solnit, a far more seasoned writer, has fallen victim to this phenomenon: "There was a moment there when I was willing to believe Mr. Very Important and his overweening confidence over my more shaky certainty." And it was her book he was pontificating about!

Would I have been attacked so vigorously had I not been a young woman, with a degree in English, daring to speak about the caller's pet topic? Everyone mis-speaks occasionally when talking off-the-cuff, including the Spousal Unit. But he's a man, with a PhD in physics, so when he mis-speaks, it's assumed that he's made an honest error. When I mis-speak, it's usually assumed I am ignorant. Or sloppy. Or both. At least by men. Honestly, there were times, during the year of the First Book, when it felt less like I was being interviewed about a book I'd written, and more like I was being grilled before some self-appointed Inquisition of Popular Physics Writing to make sure I had earned the right to even be there in the first place. Generally speaking, the women who interviewed me (or reviewed the book) were interested and friendly (even if they had criticisms); several men were condescending at best, harshly critical and combative at worst.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not one of those writers who thinks her words are sacred; I rely on thoughtful, constructive criticism to improve my skills, and deliberately seek it out. I'm also a bit of a perfectionist. Like most writers, I'd dearly love to rewrite portions of that first book, so it could benefit from everything I learned in the process of writing it. That sort of input is not the same thing as a subtle power play, an attempt to put the little lady in her place, thinly disguised as helpful criticism, the better to puff up one's own ego and sense of superiority. (Jen-Luc Piquant acidly comments that if you take such faux-criticism otherwise, you're denounced as clearly "over-sensitive." Hey, must be "that time of the month!" Insert deprecating chuckle here. Cut her some slack. She's still bitter over a recent confrontation with a pompous Lacanian Avatar Who Explains Things about deconstructing Jane Eyre.)

Sometimes I envy Explaining Men this over-weening confidence in their own authority -- even when they actually know very little about the particular topic at hand. In this era of superficial dialogue, the appearance of knowledge is often all that's required. Then again, the constant reminders of my own supposed irrelevance have made me stronger, more confident with each storm I weather that yes, I do deserve to be here, and to be heard. All those years as a struggling writer have given me a hard-won expertise that no patronizing Explaining Man can take away from me.

Maybe I'm more appreciative of the freedom to speak because I had to fight so hard to find my voice in the first place. These days, I'm more inclined towards rueful amusement when encountering Men Who Explain Things. But as Solnit points out, that's because we've had to learn to publicly stand our ground as authors; millions of other women don't get that particular boost, and never learn to push back. That's the underlying tragedy of what would otherwise be an amusing oddity of social discourse. Per Solnit: "The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled many women... [including] the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human."

Certainly, throughout the ages, women have not enjoyed many exalted positions in intellectual circles, especially in math and science. Usually, they had to teach themselves, unless they came from wealthy and/or noble families. Such was the case with an 18th century Italian mathematician named Maria Gaetana Agnesi.
The eldest of 21 children -- I was relieved to learn her father married three times, since the thought of one woman enduring that many pregnancies boggled the mind -- Agnesi was very much a child prodigy, known in her family as "the Walking Polyglot" because she could speak French, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German and Latin by the time she was 13.

Agnesi had the advantage of a wealthy upbringing; the family fortune came from the silk trade. And she also had a highly supportive father, who hired the very best tutors for his talented elder daughter. Unfortunately for the shy, retiring Agnesi, he also insisted she participate in regular intellectual "salons" he hosted for great thinkers hailing from all over Europe. The young Maria delivered an oration in defense of higher education for women in Latin at the age of 9 (she had translated it from the Italian herself and memorized the text).

There is evidence from contemporary accounts that Agnesi loathed this sort of thing and hated being put on display, even though her erudition earned her much admiration. One contemporary, Charles de Brosseslde Brosses, recalled, "she told me that she was very sorry that the visit had taken the form of a thesis defence, and that she did not like to speak publicly of such things, where for every one that was amused, twenty were bored to death."

Unlike the men in her father's salon, Agnesi didn't much care for Explaining Things. De Brosses admired her intellectual prowess greatly, and expressed his horror upon learning that she wished to become a nun. What a waste! was the implied sentiment. And perhaps it was. But I'm thinking maybe she was far too intelligent for her own good; she just couldn't take the self-aggrandizing intellectuals of her father's acquaintance seriously. And perhaps she realized that she would always be proving herself, and that her accomplishments, no matter how impressive, would always be treated with some degree of patronizing amazement. ("Look at the smart woman discoursing in Latin!")

Agnesi did, eventually, become a nun, but not before spending 10 years writing a seminal mathematics textbook, Analytical Institutions, which was published in 1748. (Most biographies, while admiring, feel compelled to note that the tome contained "no original mathematics.") She was also the first woman to be appointed as a mathematics professor at a university -- the University of Bologna -- although there's no record she ever formally accepted the position. She died a pauper in 1799, having given away everything she owned. At least there's a crater on Venus named in her memory. And she need never be forced to perform like a trained circus monkey again, or listen to any more Explaining Men eager to find some means to edify such a prodigy. She can just let her life's work speak for itself.

I'll give Solnit the last word, since she writes so eloquently:

"Men explain things to me still. And no man has ever apologized for
explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't. Not yet, but
according to the actuarial tables, I may have another 40-something
years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I'm not holding my breath."

Physics Cocktails

Heavy G

The perfect pick-me-up when gravity gets you down.
2 oz Tequila
2 oz Triple sec
2 oz Rose's sweetened lime juice
7-Up or Sprite
Mix tequila, triple sec and lime juice in a shaker and pour into a margarita glass. (Salted rim and ice are optional.) Top off with 7-Up/Sprite and let the weight of the world lift off your shoulders.

Any mad scientist will tell you that flames make drinking more fun. What good is science if no one gets hurt?
1 oz Midori melon liqueur
1-1/2 oz sour mix
1 splash soda water
151 proof rum
Mix melon liqueur, sour mix and soda water with ice in shaker. Shake and strain into martini glass. Top with rum and ignite. Try to take over the world.